rough-hewn fragments of memory and dreams

Main menu

Daily Archives: July 16, 2013

This book is the perfect Young Adult summer read. It’s set in the summer at a beach house where Belly, the book’s main character, spends all of her summers growing up. This book is, more than anything else, a coming of age story. It’s the summer Belly realizes that, like the title says, she’s finally pretty. She is almost sixteen years old, and she has her whole life ahead of her.

I devoured this book, remembering again my first love, first kiss, first time holding hands. This book made me nostalgic, and it also made me smile (granted, there were tears too, but most of the book was bubbly and fun). If you’re looking for a girly, beachy read with plenty of laughs and a casual, laid-back plot, this is the book for you. It’s also the first book in a trilogy, which is now sold in a one volume set, so if you think you’ll be interested in Belly’s two summers after this one, you may want to pick up the three books in one instead.

For 3 years, we have lived
3,000 miles apart.
Every day, California calls me
or I call him,
and the distance shucks off
like the green
that blankets an ear of corn.
For a couple of years,
I lived for that shucking,
lived for the moments
when the miles fell away
and I was no longer
just an East coast girl.
I was his girl, his princess,
the lady of his heart.
More than that, I was bare
as one of those ears of corn,
exposed and vulnerable,
ready to be eaten
or devoured.
Here I am, I felt like saying,
when what I really said
was a simple hello.
Through words and letters,
we wove our dreams together,
pretending we wove our lives.
Twice he flew out to see me,
and for a few short days
my life was all puffy clouds
and daydreams
only I wasn't dreaming.
I'd pinch myself
after he kissed me,
leaving little crescents
from my fingernails
in the fleshy part of my arm.
Now it has been two years
since we've made love,
two years since anyone
has kissed me
the way he kissed me,
his hands cupping my face,
his whole mouth drinking me in.
I don't dare say
we're growing apart,
but when he shucks me now,
the green no longer
all falls off.
California, my California,
you've never seemed
so far away.

You are poetry--
your words distilled,
your personality fiery
with a fierceness
that I both love
and fear.
Elusive, I find you
in the briefest moment
between sunset and full dark
when the sky's inky violet.
Far off down
my one lane country road,
a pair of headlights
comes careening.
I step off to the side
step into the rows of corn
and hide until the lights
flash by me,
standing in the high corn
until my eyes readjust
and I hear the car
backfire as it rides the bend.
I'm halfway to the dairy farm
a mile down the road.
The sycamores are white as bone.
Above and between them,
bats slash the summer air
with their chaotic flight,
diving and twirling
dark shadows that dip
too close about my head.
It is summer and you,
you are oil to my water,
rising--always rising
above.